How Gambling Is Transforming the Experience of Sports
In the seven years since it was legalized in the U.S., sports betting has elbowed its way into every corner of professional sports—a ubiquity underscored in recent months when active players and coaches in baseball and basketball were caught up in gambling scandals. We asked Professor Nathan Novemsky, who has examined the psychology of gambling in multiple studies, how betting is changing the way we watch sports.
Is the prevalence of sports betting changing the way people experience watching sports?
Sports betting can certainly change how people experience sports. Interestingly, we have some research that says the money is not necessarily even the key to these effects. For example, there has been an explosion in fantasy football participation among fans. These activities fundamentally change the way that fans view sports. Their excitement is not driven by teams winning and losing, so much as it is by “their players” having good games (good as defined by the relevant fantasy league rules). This means that fans might be interested in many more games than they once were; they might also watch multiple games at once to track their players. Fantasy football has allowed fans to be more engaged even if their preferred team is not having a good season.
One thing that is clear is that fans’ interests in sports are changing and this may be more under the control of betting platforms than of sports leagues.
What has your research shown about what is happening in people’s minds as they gamble on sports?
I have some ongoing research showing that betting on a game can change how it feels even during the game. A small bet can make the game more enjoyable to watch. Interestingly, we find that the size of the bet does not matter and even just predicting which team will win without any monetary bet leads to the same enjoyment. And that increased enjoyment of the game actually buffers the pain of losing a bet. This buffering makes a loss less painful than a win is pleasurable. This works the same for a range of small bets.
What does the growth of sports betting mean for the business of sports?
One thing that is becoming clear is that as sports bets become more frequent and therefore more top of mind for more of the sports audience, thinking about the game will change. Whereas historically audiences focused on games (and championships) being won or lost, the prevalence of many types of bets (beyond winning games and championships) has started to shift the focus to other aspects of the game (e.g. individual player performance, covering the spread, making certain parlays). This will have many difficult to predict effects on sports as these trends continue to grow.
One thing that is clear, though, is that fans’ interests in sports are changing and this may be more under the control of betting platforms than of sports leagues. This perpetual salience of various wagers may even have contributed to recently uncovered illegal activities; even the athletes cannot escape a keen awareness of the various wagers that win and lose based on their own performance each game.